Background: Pseudogenes often manifest themselves as disabled copies of known genes. In prokaryotes, it was generally believed (with a few well-known exceptions) that they were rare.
Results: We have carried out a comprehensive analysis of the occurrence of pseudogenes in a diverse selection of 64 prokaryote genomes. Overall, we find a total of around 7,000 candidate pseudogenes. Moreover, in all the genomes surveyed, pseudogenes occur in at least 1 to 5% of all gene-like sequences, with some genomes having considerably higher occurrence. Although many large populations of pseudogenes arise from large, diverse protein families (for example, the ABC transporters), notable numbers of pseudogenes are associated with specific families that do not occur that widely. These include the cytochrome P450 and PPE families (PF00067 and PF00823) and others that have a direct role in DNA transposition.
Conclusions: We find suggestive evidence that a large fraction of prokaryote pseudogenes arose from failed horizontal transfer events. In particular, we find that pseudogenes are more than twice as likely as genes to have anomalous codon usage associated with horizontal transfer. Moreover, we found a significant difference in the number of horizontally transferred pseudogenes in pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains of Escherichia coli.